More on Kindy Search

Last week, i felt so elated because i felt that i may have find THE place to send my boy to come January 2014. I found out about that particular kindy upon stumbling on its website whilst researching for kindy in the vicinity of my workplace. 

Can't say i was impressed with the layouts of the website. However, the programs that were laid out seemed interesting, and judging from the fee structure, it probably has a cozy and enriching environment for growing children. Annnndddd... given that the person i spoke to and the language used on the website was english, i was really over the moon that this place is islamic, and at the same time uses english language as the medium of communication, and will nurture these little angels to become tahfiz.

As soon as i stepped into the facility, i was met by the person that i spoke to over the phone. We sat and she asked us on our little boy's background; who are his current caretakers, feeding schedule, allergies, etc. At this point of time i concentrated on the conversation and didn't look around the facility much. And then, just out of nowhere, that person started to explain about the fee structure. I find it odd that they charge for laundry, because from my previous experiences, no other daycares charges for that because the service wasn't provided. However, that person said that the laundry fee will be waived since my boy is "still little and they don't dirty their clothes that much". Whatever.

After the lengthy explanation on the fee structure, the conclusion was that they're charging RM400+ per month for daycare, not inclusive of diapers and milk, of course. Still oblivious of the whole area, i asked to check on the daycare area. She asked us to wait while she checks on the kids. As soon as she showed me the daycare room, all my dreams shattered! The place was pathetic!!

There were three children in there, if i was not mistaken. Two babies, i presume, were sleeping in "buai", on the floor, atop a comforter. No baby cots, no toddlers' beds, no bright and colourful posters of alphabets or animals that you usually find in a daycare. Not even toys! It was just a room with a door with a couple of comforters strewn across the floor. You don't expect little kids to spend the whole time away from their parents to be confined into such a small place with no educational toys or any activities to engage them, do you?

And for that pathetic thing that they call a daycare, they're charging RM400+ a month????? Daycares that charges RM200 probably have better facilities than that! I'm sure many parents don't mind forking out that amount of money to ensure that their children receive the best care when they're out working, but it has to be justified with the service rendered, right? Which should include the facility itself!

I am truly and utterly angry, upset and disappointed. This particular kindy promotes so much on nurturing little tahfiz, and promises to provide a good system to raise good muslim children. Seriously? In that kind of environment??? A place that looked so deprived whilst a lot of RMs are spent by parents wanting the best for their children. A load of bull if i may say.

Please lah. Stop using religion to sell your products. That's just wrong.

Pencarian Daycare/Kindy Bermula!

Alas, the full-time housewife period is going to be over soon. Well, in about 7 more months or so, but believe me, it'll be over sooner than i might like to think. Heh.

A part of me is happy to go back to work. A part of me.. well.. not so happy.

Anyways... since dah nak mula kerja balik, sedang giat cari kindy untuk the little guy. We found this place. No big names/popular kindy franchise whatsoever. It uses the montessori method and we really liked the place. Classes are small, and i spent a couple of days there and i was quite amazed to see that the place is pretty quiet and serene for a kindy. You don't hear too much of kids screaming and teachers yelling in response. Everybody speaks softly. Truly amazing!

However... the problem is... my lil guy seemed not ready for a school environment yet. We were given 3 + 4 days free trial.. and he was only ok being left in class by himself on the first day, before he discovered that mommy and daddy will not stay with him at school. The rest of the days, i had to stay in the class with him. Huhu..

Cabaran jugak bila jaga anak sendiri full time, lepas tu nak transition dia pergi sekolah, ek?

Oleh yang demikian, i was thinking that i should leave him at home with the maid under the supervision of my in laws more often. Thus, i'm thinking of taking on tailoring classes. Bila nak buat? Tak tau. Asyik rasa berat hati nak tinggal dia. :p 

The second thing that i thought i should do is to enrol the lil guy in a playgroup of some sort. So, i scouted around for playgroups near my place, and came across this particular playgroup. I called the place and they signed me up for a trial session. To my surprise, they're charging RM50 per child per trial class!! And it's just a one hour class for God's sakes! 

I mean.. i just came from a week of trial classes in a real kindy that uses a proven method of teaching children, and the classes are around 4.5 hours a day, and they gave my kiddo a snack and lunch each day, and they didn't charge us anything! And then, this playgroup trial class wants to charge RM50 for one hour of dancing and arts and crafts??? 

I'm sorry. I can't help but feel that this particular organisation is a rip-off. To add salt to the wound, i didn't receive any reply after i texted my cancellation of joining the trial session. Masa hantar text suruh transfer duit lajuuuuu je. Dah la tu, you charge people heftily, and then you just use free service to communicate with your clients. Pakai whatsapp instead of sms service. Semua kira nak maximize profit je kan?

Sigh! Entahlah. Anyways, i found another playgroup closer to home and we're attending the trial session this Saturday. This playgroup charges RM25.. I think it's reasonable la given that this operator only offer one session a week for a class of less than 15 children. She still needs to pay for the materials and take care of her overheads kan? I get that. Tapi, takdela sampai mencekik darah kan?

Apapun, i hope to see improvements in my lil guy, and i sure hope i can enrol him into kindy come January '14. Mudahkanlah urusan kami ya Allah!

Green

Thinking out loud... 

Have you compared yourself with others and then feel bad about yourself, because you feel that you've achieved so little, whilst others so much more??

Sigh...

A self reminder - you get what you deserve to get. The Almighty knows what's best for you in the past, present , and future.

Please dear heart, do count your blessings. Silent the whispers that seeds ungratefulness.


“Is, then, He Who creates comparable to any that cannot create? Will you not, then, take heed? For should you try to count Allah’s blessings, you could never compute them…” (An-Nahl 16:17-19).

Battle of the Bulge

More often than not, i think most women have one issue or another with their (gasp!) weight. Too fat, too thin, too flabby, too muscular... Sigh. Once too often, women just love to pick a fight with their own bodies, whether or not there is a presence of provocation. 

And, yes. You've guessed it. I'm one of those women. I was born a normal weight infant, but my weight started to increase faster than the ideal growth rate since i was about 5 years old or so. Once that started, it never stopped. I never knew how to stop my weight from escalating. I guess, neither did my parents. 

You think being an overweight adult is hard? Try being an overweight kid. You face ridicule in every corner, not to mention the embarassment of not being able to find anything in your size in the kid's department. And, remember the weighing in that you have to do repeatedly in school? Lucky for me i attended an all-girls' school, so less ridicule from the opposite sex. (But i do still get them from inter-school activities, tuition, mengaji classes, bus rides, you get the picture, right?..oh not to forget, sharp-tongued relatives!)

So, childhood for me wasn't really the best time of my life. And i blamed that on my weight. Until now, i always feel that if only i wasn't a fat girl, i could've achieved so much more. Not that i'm not grateful with what i have now. I am. It's just that things could've been different, you know?

That said, I've vowed to always keep my kids' weight in check. So, please don't give me crap about not letting my kids enjoying life by banning candies and junk food.

Back to my battle.

I graduated from high school a whopping 75kg. I went into college, shed some weight, thanks to increased activity and self-induced bulimia. I can credit that to peer pressure (and influence). So my weight always hovered around 70 - 73 kg. Maintained that weight zone through uni. 

Had a breakthrough dieting & working out period in which i managed to get my weight down to 60 kg, eating only fruits and veg, if I'm not mistaken, and only those listed under negative calorie foods. Workout consisted of walking on a daily basis, plus aerobics every other day. But of course, the weight loss didn't last. Before long, i was back at my "comfort" weight zone.

I was at my heaviest during my second pregnancy, during my last few weeks, I think i was at 98 kg.. It felt horrible! (Not the pregnancy, only the heaviness!)

One year down the road from my second pregnancy, my weight's back to the higher end of the "comfort" zone, but I was so upset looking at my mid section. Cutting the story short, i was again embroiled into dieting, and from my research this time around i came about another diet. 

I went on this diet for 45 days. I lost almost 5kgs. My weight actually came down lower than the 70kg zone! I was (and am still) elated about the result! For now, i've already ended the diet, because i need to do my qadha' fasting before the fasting month comes, but I'm certain to go back onto this diet after Raya. I've never been quite so excited on a diet before, and somehow, being on this diet I didn't really feel like wanting to get out of it.

Anyways, I'm not describing the nature of this diet just yet, so as not to jinx it, kind of. We'll see how long this weight loss is going to last, ok?

Music for the soul (and brain development)..

I can't remember where and when, but i had read somewhere that music can help the brain development of young children. 

Therefore, I enrolled our firstborn into a music class when she was 4 years old. The only class i knew back then was Yamaha. :) I didn't actually have a plan on the direction of her musical encounter. For me, i just wanted her to learn music to ensure more connections of neurons in her brain. I could be wrong.. but it's something that i believed in. 

Anyways, so we enrolled her into this Junior Music Course (JMC) for children aged 4 to 6. The course is delivered in a classroom environment, where there's a teacher who'll teach the kids to sing, play and move to the music. One parent have to be present during classes to help their kids out. The instrument at this stage is the electone as the keys are "softer" thus easier to respond to little fingers. 

We were quite clueless about the course initially. We didn't know that it's actually a two-year course. At the end of the course, there will be an assessment, named the Fundamental Skills Survey, in which students will be assessed in their singing (pitching/tone, i think?), instrument playing (the students need to play 2 ensembles from any of their 4 books), play one song in which they had partially composed, sing solfege by listening, identifying chords (at this stage 4 chords - C, G, F major and D minor) by listening and identifying musical notes. Given that most kids at this stage are 6 years old, that's quite an achievement in itself, don't you think?

That's what my kiddo will go through next month. She's almost completed her JMC course and i can really see her progress. Her teacher is giving her a trial exam next week. 

Some might question the need to make little kids go through such pressure, right? Well.. in our case, we didn't pressure her into doing it. She wanted to do it. She wants to practice everyday. Even when selecting the songs to play for the assessment, she picked quite challenging pieces. We're just following her lead and give her as much support as we can.

Now.. since we didn't have a plan, again, I was quite dumbstruck when the teacher asked on what's our plan after the JMC. Hubby was really hoping to get her a personal tutor at home. Teacher at yamaha suggested continuing with Yamaha music course... Gasp!! Confused!

So, i did some googling and asking around. Just to share with you parents who are also in the same boat as i am. 

Basically, three things pop up while i googled on piano lesson in Malaysia. JMC/JXC (yamaha courses), ABRSM and Trinity Guildhall. ABRSM and Trinity Guildhall are examination boards and are accredited to graded exams in music. On the other hand, yamaha music courses is actually a music education structure with its own exams (not governed under neither ABRSM nor Trinity). The yamaha system is age sensitive in which each key stages correspond to a particular age group, starting at age 3, and finishing off at age 12 (Yamaha grade 5).

From my research, yamaha focuses more on music appreciation in the sense that it not only focuses on score reading, but teaches children to listen as well as compose songs. A lot of people are saying that yamaha students tend to be able to play by ear and are not restricted to having a score to play a musical piece. ABRSM and Trinity on the other hand has a more technical approach and teaches more on classical pieces.

Yamaha courses are run in classroom environment (for JMC and JXC, not sure for other levels), whilst ABRSM and Trinity are based on one on one interaction between the student and the teacher. Meaning, parents have to be more hands-on for the yamaha courses, whilst for the ABRSM and Trinity, parents can take a back seat. 

So, taken all that into consideration, we are going to continue with the Yamaha system for now. We've asked her what she wanted to do, and she said she wanted to continue with classes, so that's what we're gonna do, for now. The yamaha teacher said that many parents take both classes, yamaha and ABRSM so that their children will learn both, but for us since our aim is not really to go for the paper qualification, that approach might be a little too much for us. But we'll see as time goes.

Whhoaaa.. Too Long!

How many months has it been now, since the last post?? Too long... wayyyy too long.

The new year has come. Ten more days before my little tike turns one! Which means that it's been a year of me being a full-time housewife. I've been asked many times about what it's like to be a stay-at-home-mom. Honestly, for someone who's used to meeting people on a daily basis, it can get quite depressing sometimes just staying at home. The only other people that i see apart from my kids, husband and the maid are my mother, brother, sis-in-law, mil, fil, hubby's cousin who's doing renovation on our house, his wife and his workers.. oh.. and the paediatrician, once in a while. I don't see friends or colleagues or other people, i don't really talk about other things and don't gossip much (which is a good thing). It's not like hubby doesn't allow me to go out and see my friends, but I feel that it's gonna be such a hassle trying to do that and i feel that i can't leave the baby with anyone else (since he's fully breastfeeding and i don't pump - my bad!)

Well, the price i have to pay for being so "kedekut" to share my children with others. Well.. it's not that i'm being kedekut, but i tend to get jealous when my kids spend more time, thus get closer to others rather than me (or their daddy). Just the thought of it makes me sad. That's why, even with a domestic helper present at our home, she doesn't really care for the kids, except for the instances that i need her to watch over my kids eg. when i cook or pray or need to use the WC. She helps out in the area i needed help the most - cleaning the house! :D For most of my friends who knows me, I really suck at cleaning up. Huh.

As mentioned earlier, Seth's gonna be 1 in 10 days! He's starting to take a few steps, but he does it infrequently. He much prefers crawling or being ferried by mommy. He's so adorable and much more manja than his sister. His sister is manja, but more manja with Daddy, and this boy is more manja with me. That's how it usually works, right? At eleven months, he's also starting to imitate what others do. He tried to put on a pair of socks, he tried to brush kakak's hair, tried to put on a hat on his kakak... He's lucky to have a sister ho loves him and adores him to bits. She'd just let him do whatever to her. It's amusing and amazing to see them play together (not to mention nerve-wrecking too, sometimes).

Sarah's growing too. She's gonna be six next month. Wow.. hard to believe that i gave birth to her almost 6 years ago. She's such a chatterbox!! Hubby and I think that not being able to speak would be a punishment for her. She talks, and talks, and talks endlessly. I really wonder where she got that trait from (hubby!). 

I was looking forward for a trip planned this May. A trip to a place i've always wanted to go, and always wanted to return to with la familia. But, given the condition of the company that hubby's working with right now, i'm not sure if it will happen. Sigh! Hoping for the best.

Hokaayy... my sleepy eyes begets me. Routine's waiting for me tomorrow. 

Cheers.